Issue 37: Stranger Technologies by Marina Gross-Hoy
I am almost out of time in Paris. I keep my headset on and loop around back to the beginning of the museum, eager to see how big the crowds will have grown by the time I get back to the portico....
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Stranger Technologies by Marina Gross-Hoy
The audioguide tells me to look through a hole carved into the wooden window shutters where a German soldier had spied down on advancing French resistance fighters during the Liberation of Paris. I edge over to peer onto the view of rue de Rivoli and the Tuileries Garden, careful not to whack the king’s old furniture with my bag. Early evening traffic circulates below: buses crammed to capacity, pedestrians walking with baguettes poking out of grocery caddies, streams of bicycles carrying commuters across town to their Friday evening apéros. There are so many bikes on the streets now. My friend says the numbers have surged since lockdown, but the infrastructure hasn’t changed to accommodate them. She grips my arm every time I step out to cross a street without looking carefully enough for cyclists.
“They’re crazy,” my friend warns. “They think they are invulnerable to crashes.”
The voice in my audioguide headset — the imagined royal intendant from a time when this building was not a museum or a Resistance asset or the headquarters of the Navy, but a stockroom for the monarchy’s surplus furniture — invites me to keep moving along, the device’s motion sensors tattling on my pause at the window. I am here tonight to be moved by this audioguide. I had heard that the binaural sound technology is supposed to make you feel like the building’s previous inhabitants are personally guiding you through the space. If you turn toward a fireplace in one of the freshly restored period rooms, the sound of crackling flames is triggered as if there is a fire blazing in front of you. The sensory immersion in another time promises to be total….
Read Stranger Technologies.
Marina Gross-Hoy is a scholar, writer, and speaker who lives in the Eastern Townships of Québec. She is completing a Museum Studies PhD dissertation at the Université du Québec à Montréal on the development of digital interpretation projects for visitors. She holds degrees in History of Art from the University of Michigan and muséologie from the École du Louvre in Paris. Marina writes about playing with new ways of paying attention to embodied experience. By subverting the gaze honed through looking at art in museums and turning it onto the ordinary and natural world, her essays explore how engaging with life through this 'museum gaze' can open us up to wonder, compassion, and empowerment.
Issue 37 Highlights
We’re thrilled to introduce the newest members of our curated team: writers nawa a.h., Mayur Chauhan, Marina Gross-Hoy, and Michael Nagle; artists Heidi Grace Acuña (Issue 37) and Kirk Read; and Featured Writer Christina Berke and Featured Artist Ro Stasny.
Check out Issue 37 here, and if you missed our previous issues, visit our Archive.
Issue 37: The Minotaur by Michael Nagle | Artwork by Kirk Read
Issue 37: Stranger Technologies by Marina Gross-Hoy
Issue 37: to buwaya baby by nawa a.h. | Artwork by Heidi Grace Acuña
Issue 37: A Little Bit of Everything by Mayur Chauhan
Issue 37: a good egg by Featured Writer Christina Berke
Issue 37: hive forest by Featured Artist Ro Stasny
Artists and Writers
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With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad
OMG!!
It gets better with every read. 🧡🧡
What a thrill to be a part of KHÔRA’s collaborative ecosystem ✨ A big thanks to Leigh and the M-Squad for helping make this piece sing.